1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of video conferencing, and more particularly to a method and system for display of status information for video devices in video conferences.
2. Description of the Related Art
Over the past several years, video conferencing has gained acceptance as a way for businesses to conduct meetings. Compared with audio telephone conferences, video conferencing allows a more personal interaction between participants and supports visual presentation of information, such as by sharing presentations and documents. The quality of communication by video conferencing has steadily improved in recent years with the availability of greater communication bandwidth and information processing capability. This improved quality has encouraged businesses to invest in video communication devices and networks to support greater numbers of video conferences, both within the business and with customers outside of the business. One advantage for a business in investing in video conferencing capability is a reduction in travel costs with greater numbers of meetings occurring via video conferencing instead of in person. However, as the number of video calls and the complexity of video networks for a business increase, difficulties in use, scheduling and interoperability of video devices often arise. One key for a business to obtain the most possible return on an investment in video devices and a video network is simplification of the use of the video devices and video network so that users will feel comfortable relying on the video devices and video network for important communications.
As an example of the complexity that sometimes arises in the use of video devices on a video network, a business video network may have multiple active and scheduled video calls that each uses a variety of different types of video devices manufactured by different manufacturers and compliant with a variety of standards. For instance, each of the multiple video calls supported on a video network at a given time may communicate audiovisual and data information between multiple video end points located on different networks using H.320 and H.323 standards through gateways, switches, routers and multi-point call units (MCUs). Further adding to the complexity of monitoring and scheduling video calls is the convergence towards Internet-based video communication that performs video device functions with software modules deployed on server devices. Although video devices manufactured by different manufacturers generally are able to support video calls by the use of standard communication protocols, each manufacturer typically has unique interfaces for determining the status of their own video devices.
A video network administrator responsible for scheduling video calls and monitoring the progress of active video calls typically has to have familiarity with multiple interfaces and experience in network administration to interact effectively with different manufacturer interfaces for monitoring multiple active calls. With multiple active video calls, a variety of video devices may connect and disconnect to an active video conference or experience technical difficulties, such as excessive data latencies, that may call for network administrator intervention. In order for the network administrator to track video call progress and status or to intervene to correct video call difficulties or video device failures, the network administrator generally must navigate through a variety of user interfaces to review video device states and events. Typically, navigating through various interfaces is difficult and time consuming, requiring interpretation of textual data or non-intuitive graphical presentations such as call logs or separate device representations, so that even experienced network administrators are easily overwhelmed with the task of monitoring video calls and are thus capable of only limited corrective actions during peak operations to ensure smooth video network operations.